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07 January 2015

REVIEW: Law and Communication (St. Petersburg, 11-12 December 2014)

Review by Dmitry Poldnikov (Moscow)

International conference: "Law and Communication" (St.
Petersburg, 11-12 December 2014)

The international conference "Law and
Communication" was organized at St. Petersburg State University, Faculty
of Law, to honour the 60th anniversary of professor Andrey Polyakov, the
leading protagonist of the "law-as-communication" legal theory in
Russia. This occasion attracted over 70 reporters (theoreticians of law,
philosophers, practitioners) who collaborate with professor Polyakov and share
his approach to study law.

Despite a variety of topics, most participants of the
conference found their crossing points in the subject-centred perspective and
the plurality of approaches to study the complex phenomenon of law in the
period of post-modernity. The main ideas of the key-note presentations have
been already developed and published in the two-volume "Festschrift"
for professor Andrey Polyakov (Alef-Press, 2014, in Russian).

The main reason for a legal historian to participate
at the conference (and to write a review thereof) is to foster the dialogue between
legal history and legal theory in the methodological field. One of the major
claims of Andrey Polyakov (and the St. Petersburg school of legal
theoreticians, which goes back to Leon Petrazycki) is that law, in all its
complexity, is basically a way of communication between human beings. This
communication is based on the psychological interpretation of legal texts which
leads to social interaction through claims, duties and liabilities. One can
find similar perspective on law in Van Hoecke’s «Law as Communication» (2002)
published almost simultaneously with Polyakov’s habilitation thesis (2001).
Both professors underline the importance of communication or interaction
between the subjects to create, develop and legitimate the law. This
ontological perspective on law justifies the need for "multi-level
approach" (Krawietz) to study and to uncover the "unsolvable enigma
of law" (Chestnov).

Legal historians could also benefit from these
methodological tenets, especially when dealing with the medieval disputes among
creators and practitioners of the learned law (ius commune). Yet, legal theoreticians still underestimate the
importance of this heritage. Apparently due to insufficient knowledge of
history. For example, in Russian translation (2012) of Van Hoecke’s "Law
as Communication" (2002) medieval learned law was called "primarily a
matter of power" (instead of "authority", as in the English
original). Although Van Hoecke’s own claim that "Legal science was also a
matter of authority, not of rational
consensus" (p.6) is also debatable. Most researchers of the medieval
learned law would agree that it was based on both authority and reason (ratio), as Renoux-Zagamé put it.